Sitter rate?

BabyHope2013 · January 2015

We are going to have our daycare lady's daughter babysit for us sometime in the next few weeks. Just to give DH and I a night off to go have dinner together. She is 13 and has some but not a ton of experience. I trust her 110% and she has alot of experience with my son just with helping her mom during the summer and after school. I am debating how much to pay her. I was thinking either $8 or $10. Would like to stay on the cheaper side---but don't want to be too cheap. We would likely pick her up and drop her off at the end of the night at home since she can't drive. How much would you pay?

ambmama · January 2015

We pay our sitter $15/hr, but she's an adult (21) and in college. It's pretty standard here and what the other families pay her as well. For a teenager I may go down to $10/hr if they were happy with it. We live about an hour outside of Philly and we seem to be paying the market rate.

ambmama · January 2015

@seqvt86 Nice find! I was close, it's $14.50 around us! Crazy!

spikeinc · January 2015

When we have experienced adults babysit we pay $12.50 an hour. We pay our neighbor's granddaughter who is 12 $7.50 an hour. Most of the time we have her come after we have put DD down for the night so she just has to check the monitor periodically. She has all the emergency numbers and her grandmother is two doors down so if there was an emergency, someone could drive. She did take a babysitting class which included CPR.

ohiodoxiemama08 · January 2015

I'm with @amnat84. In the midwest teenage babysitters do not get paid a lot. In fact I had a 13 year old watch her for about 4 hours and offered her $20 and she (and her mom that was with her) said that was way too much. Typically young date-night sitters get paid any where between $3-5 an hour. I know that's super cheap but it makes my wallet happy!

ambmama · January 2015

Wow @ohiodoxiemama08‌! I need to move there! That's awesome!

ambmama · January 2015

chilibeansm0m said:

amnat84 said:
I have to admit we don't pay a lot, but every time I've used a sitter literally all they've done is maybe play with DD for up to an hour and then put her to bed and watched TV. I'm not paying $10-15 for that. And it's typically someone we know well.
This is what i tried to tell dh about his cousin dude. I'm like she watches tv for 2 hours and texts her friends and plays with R for 1 hour. With the tv dude. But he is the one that insists on paying her more.

So that's what our sitter does, too. But the fact that she can feed him, bathe him, and actually get him to sleep and I don't have to worry while I'm out - totally worth the $15/hr to me. I had a lot of bad nanny trials when DS was born so a person capable of putting my toddler to bed is worth a heck of a lot.

ConstanceGoodspeed · January 2015

Just remember that she is 13 and will be thrilled with whatever you pay. I would do $10; we pay $15-20 to our adult sitters.

court115 · January 2015

For a 13 year old, I agree with everyone else. Do $10/hour. We are pretty lucky in that our sitters are usually my parents on my ILs but I know one well-used babysitter in my mom's circle gets $20-25 an hour! DH actually suggested using her this weekend so we could go to dinner without bugging his parents to sit again. When I told him how much she charged, his response was "I thought it would be like $5 an hour." Really? lol

BabyHope2013 · January 2015

Thanks all for the input!

Want a personalized experience?

Sitter rate?

Re: Sitter rate?

Choose Another Board

Search Boards